THE ETCHINGS OF B. J. O. NORDFELDT WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT W^: BRUERE ARTHUR H. HAHLO & CO. 569 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK ST. PAUL'S CHAPEL Size of the original etching lOK x 18^ inches. THE ETCHINGS OF B. J. O. NORDFELDT WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT W. BRUERE (ILLUSTRATED) ARTHUR H. HAHLO & CO. S69 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK MADISON SQUARE GARDEN Size of the original etching 10 Jf x 12?^ inches. THE ETCHINGS OF B. J. O. NORDFELDT JF the capacity to experience great emotion and to embody that emotion in significant form is the mark of a genuine artist, then Mr. Nordfeldt has proved his right to the title in this virile series of New York etchings. For they are much more than representations of buildings or groups of buildings; they are trans lations into rhythmical line, subtly balanced masses of rich black and sUvery gray, and ma jestically harmonious design of the very spirit of the city as it reveals itself to one -whose ar tistic sensibility penetrates beneath the surface of things to the eternal reality behind them. Only once before have I been so stirred to a realization of what New York, with its "clus tering group of tall irregular crenellations, the strangest crown that ever city wore" — might mean to an artist capable of reacting emotion ally to its blindly aspiring immensities. In look ing at these etchings, I feel again, but in greater and subtler perfection, the emotion I felt when I first read that chapter in H. G. Wells' "The Future in America," where he -writes of New York's achievement as a "threatening promise, gro-wth going on under pressure that increases, and amidst a hungry uproar of effort." It is characteristic of Mr. Nordfeldt's genius that he should have been inspired to what is until now his most adequate creative expres sion by the subjects he has chosen here. For both by endowment and discipline his spirit is essentially contemporary; and contemporary New York is, above everything else. It has the almost primitive simplicity of an age that takes the world bravely as it finds it, and aspires mightily with a passionate if vague sense of the end of its aspiration. And here again the emotion it awakens is pre cisely the emotion to the expression of which Mr. Nordfeldt's technical procedure is pecu liarly well adapted. He is not primarily inter ested in the detached line or the picturesque detail; these he prizes as an artist of fine sen sibility should, but always he subordinates them to the mass of the composition. His in terest is essentially decorative. "Here," he seems to say, "is a space to be decoratively filled, and the decoration must be conceived as a whole and with reference to the limiting space before a line is drawn or a detail considered." CITY HALL PARK (Woolworth Building) Size of the original etching S% x Vl% inches. It is for this reason that these etchings are con vincing and satisfying as works of art quite ir respective of the subjects expressed in their titles. Literalism, mere fidelity of representa tion, has not been his first concern ; the subjects have served only to kindle his emotion and to suggest the significant forms — the rhythmical lines, the harmoniously composed masses of dark and l^ht — -which his emotion required for its objective expression. The delight of them lies peculiarly in the fact that they do not even suggest photographic representations, but that, like an authentic Romanesque arch or a rare piece of Japanese pottery, they are things of en rapturing beauty in and for themselves. But the power to translate emotion so that it is not enfeebled, but rather chastened and heightened in its decorative expression is not easily acquired. The mastery over plate and point, acid and ink and press, -which every lover of etching must perceive in this series, Mr. Nordfeldt -won after years of labor. He began to etch in New York in 1907, working under the usual handicap of the artist possessed by the necessity for self-expression in that he was compelled to feel his way without the help of a teacher. He spent his first year with dry point. The following year in Paris, and later in THE SPAN (Brooklyn Bridge) Size of the original etching 10^ x VZ% inches. Florence, Venice, and Tangier, he ventured up on his first experiments with the acid. In all of these early attempts, his characteristic sense of decoration was manifest; always he ¦was in terested in the mass effect of the city in avhich he happened to be, rather than in the odd cor ner or the quaintly picturesque detail so much loved by most etchers. But in looking at these earlier plates one has the feeling that the a-wak- ened emotion is trapped and in a measure ex hausted by the struggle to escape technical complications. In the Chicago seriesof 1911, and in the San Francisco and second Chicago series of the following year, there are increas ing signs that technical impediments are dis appearing. Sometimes his emotion is snared on the -way; but sometimes he very definitely arrives. The "Illinois Steel Company" of the first Chicago series, "Telegraph Hill" and the "Mounted Policeman" done in San Francisco and the colorful and finely composed "Coal Crusher" and "Big Elevator" of the second Chicago series are excellent performances, as are the plates from the year 1913-14 spent in France. Whether dealing with the quaint roofs of little to-wns in Brittany or with aspects of a Paris which is fast disappearing as in "The Archway" or the "Hotel d'Or," Mr. Nordfeldt •WASHINGTON ARCH Size of the original etching wH x 12% inches. proves his ability to grasp and portray the spirit of a place; -while such plates as the " Rue St. Jacques" with the richness of the blacks of the windows, or the "Cour des Halles" -with the luminosity of its shadows, show an increas ing mastery of technique. But it is not until this present series, inspired by the titanic mas ses of contemporary New York that the eman cipation is complete. Here one feels that the decorative conception reaches the plate intact; that there has been no hesitancy in finding pre cisely the right line; no uncertainty as to the depth to -which the acid should be permitted to bite; no fumbling in wiping the ink over the plate or in driving the print through the press. All the artist felt in looking upon the charac teristic masses of the city is here. And what he has obviously felt, as I have said before, is what W^ells seems to have felt, that threatening promise, that gro-wth going on under a pressure that increases, and amidst a hungry uproar of effort, which is New York's unfinished achievement, the eternal reality of elemental forces at work behind the city's tran sitory forms. This is responsible for the bold ness and almost primitive vigor of the design which appears in most of the plates and is only modified to express the divergent Gothic mood LOWER BAY FROM THE SINGER TO"WER Size of the original etching 9M x VP/i inches. of "St. Thomas' Church" and "St. Patrick's Ca- thedral"^hose comparatively frail and delicate fragments of a faith-assured age wafted by accidental winds into our less believing, more dynamic contemporary world. This is res ponsible for the broken lines in the soaring uprights of the bviildings' that stop breathless and exhausted in their Promethean reach for the skies. This is responsible for the fearless contrasts in dark and light with their subtly exquisite suggestion of the harmony between the city and the elemental forces of nature. This sense of growth under pressure, of threat ening though imperfectly realized promise sur vives even in such plates as that of "St. Paul's Chapel." That gracious structure, so charm ingly reminiscent of fading colonial days, is merged into the mass of the city that piles it self up round about it. Blot out so much as an inch at either side of the print, and St. Paul's remains intact; but the thing has become com monplace, the composition as a -whole has lost the spirit that is the essence of its decorative nobility. It has lost the ecstacy of the artist's emotion which is responsive to the mass of the city; it has lost its triumphant spontaneity. And this spontaneity, by the way, is again in considerable measure due to Mr. Nordfeldt's ST. THOMAS'S Size of the original etching 95^ x WA inches. method of work. Once his emotion has reacted to his chosen subject, once his detorative con ception has taken form in his mind, he goes into the bustling street, into an open corner of a city square, or to an upper floor of some tall office building and draws directly upon his plate. There are no preliminary sketches, no ^erasures or redra-wings, no tracing through the sketch to the copper, no reversing for the sake of artistically irrelevant literalness of repre sentation. Only a single process intervenes between the finished intellectual conception and the printing. And to forestall the possi ble sacrifice of any part of this spontaneity, Mr. Nordfeldt does not rely upon a mechanic, how ever skillful, for his printing; he is his own printer. It has been said that no printer can print a good proof from a bad plate; but that, on the other hand, an uninspired and mechan ical printer can spoil the most perfectly etched plate in the world. Everything depends upon a right appreciation of the required thickness of the ink, both in its first preparation and in its distribution over the plate; everything depends upon just the right pressure of the fingers as they wipe the ink in bold swirls over the cop per. For this reason, Mr. Nordfeldt has made it his business to acquire the same mastery THE EQUITABLE Size of the original etching lOJ^ x IZH inches. ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL Size of the original etching 7% x 13^ inches. WALL STREET Size of the original etching 7% x \Z% inches. over the ink and the press that has given him his admirable control over the point and the acid. It is to the beauty of the printing that his etchings owe much of their characteristic distinction. The appeal of these etchings will no doubt vary with the varying interests of the indivi dual observers; but their cumulative effect as a series is their supreme delight. Their tech nical treatment does of course differ -with the difference in the decorative problem presented in each. The etching of "Lo-wer Broad-way" is built upon a repetition of to-wering vertical lines harmonized by rich masses of black and white. "The Span" is a repetition of noble cur ves harmonized to the dominant curve of the bridge moving like Halley's comet out into in finity. "St. Paul's'' is a study in skillfully har monized triangles, technically akin to "Wall Street" -with its triangulation of blacks yielding to the dominant theme of the finely constructed perspective. In all of these and several more, the spirit of the city is approached through in dividual structures, or structures so closely related as to count as one. In "The Three Bridges" on the other hand, in "The Equitable Building," "The Two Towers," "The North River," the "Brooklyn Bridge" and in the su- ^^m^ ¦..^:i^it^£:s:^-